Memeorandum

January 29, 2015

Too Dumb Even For Environmentalists

New Report Urges Western Governments to Reconsider Reliance on Biofuels

Western governments have made a wrong turn in energy policy by supporting the large-scale conversion of plants into fuel and should reconsider that strategy, according to a newreport from a prominent environmental think tank.

Turning plant matter into liquid fuel or electricity is so inefficient that the approach is unlikely ever to supply a substantial fraction of global energy demand, the report found. It added that continuing to pursue this strategy — which has already led to billions of dollars of investment — is likely to use up vast tracts of fertile land that could be devoted to helping feed the world’s growing population.

With that perfectly reasonable and scientific based explanation for why footballs could lose air pressure.....ask yourself, why didn't Serious and Professional media members and pundits accept that perfectly reasonable explanation....and simply move on?

One answer could be that "deflate-gate" is just another public-relations advertising gimmick to gin up interest for the upcoming Superbowl. The NFL allows for a two week gap in between the league championship games and the Superbowl with only the extremely boring Pro-Bowl to offer to fans in the interim.

Maybe deflate-gate is just a campaign to keep fan interests peaked. Or maybe,like Robert Parry suggests here, the rot of U.S. corporate media, as evidenced in much of today's non-sports "news reporting"....has spread to sports media. Maybe the basic laziness and entitlement mentality of compromised "news journalism" has now infected corporate-sponsored sports journalism.

henry-- absolutely. Greenspan/Bernanke/Hobbit should all be ashamed of themselves for the commodities bubble they created and continued with their maniacal 'anti-deflation' monetary and QE policy. That bubble was the opportunity for the 'alternative energy' grifters to get their foot in the door, and for filthy politicians to hand out subsidies as oil went from $35 to $120 barrel in 5 years. Despicable.

Ventura said Wednesday he won’t see the film partly because Kyle is no hero to him.

“A hero must be honorable, must have honor. And you can’t have honor if you’re a liar. There is no honor in lying,” Ventura told The Associated Press from his winter home in Baja California, Mexico. He also noted that the movie isn’t playing there.

Pushback stiffing spines in Madison. The poll in question shows overwhelming support for right to work in WI, with even 51% of union households in favor of it. The Senate Majority Leader is now on board (the Assembly was not in question).

I'd like some crafty think tank to estimate the array of opportunity costs associated with the biofuel travesty. And I don't mean an output in just raw dollars, but some conversion into starving children left unfed, vaccines not administered due to misapplication of resources, et cetera. This boondoggle did serious damage to many people around the world. Make those watermelons own it.

BoE-- beautiful idea. Let's do it for biofuels, and the wind/solar subsidies, and DDT bans, and for coolant bans, and for the vaccination/Autism nonsense, and Alar, and AGW and every other scam the worldwide grifters have pulled off with varying damage. The Danish economist has done some of this.

Nice of her to draw the Venn diagram for us. Geez these people really are masochists to continually and voluntarily and need we say gleefully step on their own dicks while attempting to use it as a weapon.

Kyle claimed in his book to have punched Ventura in a bar because Ventura said something nasty about the SEALs. As I understand it Kyle didn't outright name him, but evidently it was obvious who he was talking about. When challenged Kyle wasn't able to provide much proof that this actually happened.

So Ventura sued, and I don't know the details but Kyle was killed while the suit was pending and Ventura decided to go after the estate. He won about $1.5 million.

You pegged it. What do you suppose is going through what passes for the minds of the Fascist Senators who will vote for her as the centerpiece floating in the Department of JustUs cesspool? Visions of crumbling Blue Walls surrounding choking Blue Hells would be my bet.

On a related note, I took my older girls to the Texas State Cemetery this past Memorial Day. It was a beautiful misty morning, but the ceremony had to be moved indoors for fear of rain (lots of older veterans who needed to be seated out of the chill and rain, so I think it was a good call).

Anyway, there wasn't much room in the small space, so we along with many of the attendees decided to walk around the cemetery. Chris Kyle's grave is right there. It didn't yet have a headstone at that time, but it is very prominently placed, and was covered in flowers, photos and remembrances. There were many bowed heads in the immediate vicinity.

You'd think that the success of "American Sniper" (not just the financial success, but the widespread audience reactions, all over the country) would be a tipoff to R politicians that there are a LOT of people who actually still hold pretty fundamental American beliefs, and are just waiting for something to latch on to that echoes and reinforces their beliefs and values, rather than undermining and mocking them.

The shrieking of prog critics about the movie ought to underline that, too.

You'd think the dicks would get weary of being so abused, but seeing as dicks are the quintessential tools of the patriarchy, I find it difficult to muster any compassion under the masochists own rules.

UW-Madison chancellor Rebecca Blank warned in a statement that ”This is going to mean layoffs in all of my schools and colleges.”

I think Walker is basically doing the right thing by cutting the budget in exchange for more autonomy for the university. I don't think freezing tuition is necessary (low in-state tuition is subsidizing the universities), nor is commenting on things like teaching loads (that's substituting jawboning for control), but overall he's going in the right direction.

It's painfully obvious, James D. The prog freak out is even more telling. They're scared to death about a lot of things and still stinging from the mid-terms, and realizing that Hillary! is their only option.

jimmyk/henry-- per Insty, Walker should demand Administrator cuts before faculty cuts. The Administrator count and $$$ is what exploded over the past 30 years, not tenured faculty. Adjuncts & and contract profs? THey are a profit center.

NK, you have to let progs be progs and let them be autonomous in cutting value to students first. Then hammer them once the population catches on and profs are po'd at the administrators. Right now lefty profs and admins gang up on tax / tuition payers. This is step one.

Also, I have seen enough of "unintended consequences" that whenever anything is proposed, I always start thinking "What is the most likely result of this?"

This is why I really think Lizzie Warren should be asked to justify her $300,000 salary for teaching ONE course at Harvard.
When she took that job she wasn't famous to add to the prestige of the university. She didn't have any unusual legal expertise. Judging from her speeches, she's not a particularly fascinating lecturer, either.

So just what was it that made her more valuable than the average pediatrician, critical care nurse, or plumber?

I normally don't care what anyone else makes, being as how envy is a sin and it's non of my business, anyway.

However, when someone spends a lot of time bemoaning how the middle class is sinking and they have to take out loans to educate their kids, and one of the CAUSES of the loans is excessive salaries in universities, and when such a person is acting like she was a hardscrabble bootstraps type of person, well then:

"The Administrator count and $$$ is what exploded over the past 30 years, not tenured faculty."

True. To be fair, some of the administrative bloat is in response to government intrusions. For example, when I questioned why my institution has an Office of Sustainability, I was told that it pays for itself with Federal grants. HR is bloated by compliance reqs, there are all sorts of people who have to help with all the hoop jumping for accreditation, and so on. Get the Feds out of it and some of the problems solve themselves.